Eventually, after two dozen viewings, you whittled down the questions created by the Minneapolis video of an ICE agent killing 37-year-old Renee Good, to a single query.

Not: Was this a murder in cold blood, or was it a federal agent acting in self-defense? Not: Could the ICE agent have stepped out of the way? Not: Had Good, an American citizen, a widow, and a mother, turned the steering wheel hard enough to avoid the agent with her SUV?

Those questions are all valid and gut-wrenching, but they’re for the investigators to answer.

Your question hits much closer to home — our home, the Valley. Your question: How long until this happens here? Your answer: Likely very soon indeed.

What happened on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis continues to cleave the nation as I write this, less than 24 hours after the incident. But no sooner did I view the video than my mind returned to a story I’d read a few days before, hosted on The Bulwark website and written by Adrian Carrasquillo, who pens an immigration newsletter entitled “Huddled Masses.”

The headline? “Scoop: ICE Plans to Descend on Phoenix.”

Here’s an excerpt from Carrasquillo’s tale: “And as three former DHS officials in contact with their former colleagues at the agency each described to me, the expectation among current officials is that one Democratic-led city in particular is about to become the next focus of arrests, detentions and deportations: Phoenix.

“A more robust DHS presence in the Phoenix metropolitan area would mark a new phase in the Trump operations — not just because it would take place in one of the country’s most significant swing states (and a border one, at that), but because it would likely involve a greater expenditure of federal resources than prior operations in other cities have required.”

Carrasquillo reports that Phoenix is about to become “a hub of removal” in the Southwest, with soft-sided deportation facilities like Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” and, in response, the virtual certainty of furious counter-protests filling the streets.

“The timeline of increased operations in the Phoenix area is unclear,” Carrasquillo writes.

He goes on to speculate about how this might play in Arizona, sure to be a swing state in every election from November to eternity.

Having lived here for 30 years, I’ll tell you exactly how it will play. The MAGA Trump acolytes in red hats, who represent a fraction of Arizona Republicans, will rejoice. On the left, activists from groups like LUCHA AZ (Living United for Change in Arizona) will congregate and condemn.

Meanwhile, many of the rest of us, myself included, will hope to God that our cities don’t burn and that another mother doesn’t take another lethal bullet to the face.

I’m not saying this isn’t my fight. I believe every one of us who calls this country home has a stake in how we treat immigrants who have violated our laws to come here.

My preference would be to let the justice system distinguish the dreamers from the evildoers, and to expel the latter without demonizing the former.

I’m not saying you’re wrong to believe what you believe when it comes to illegal immigration — though I’m sick past nausea of hearing alleged God-fearing folk suggest violence against immigrants that flies in the face of what Jesus would have done.

What I’m saying is this: The scenario we may well be about to live in the Valley will surely not end well.

Which leaves me feeling like I’m watching the video of Renee Good’s death over and over, at normal speed and in slow motion, each time hoping for a different ending, but knowing exactly how it will end.

With a gunshot. Blood. And death.

Mark my words.

David Leibowitz

David Leibowitz has called the Valley home since 1995. Contact david@leibowitzsolo.com